Atoms, then Bits

March 7, 2017 A word to prospective employees: If you fancy a career in technology, you’re probably going to start off in tech support, maybe the Help Desk.  You may find yourself better able to do the job if you’re a tinkerer, or have some sort of hobby that involves doing things with your hands. […]

Disruption Stories

Stories abound about ways in which the Internet has been a disruptor to business and the status quo.  Back in the early 90s I got to witness the carnage and bloodshed firsthand at the University of Tulsa. As I said in the About…History is written by the victors, and the folks who were the high […]

The Kids Are Alright

From earlier: I joined TU in 1990 to run the campus computer labs. Since I was still young-looking, when Bob Chappelle hired me my first task was go undercover — bring a backpack and visit all the computer labs masquerading as a student lab patron: see what the student lab workers were doing, etc. etc.  It […]

The Internet comes to TU: A history

I started working in higher education IT in February of 1990, when the Internet was still the private playground of academia.  Because of our computer science faculty requiring access to supercomputer sites for their research, the University of Tulsa was connected to one of the original NSFNet backbones.  Our upstream provider was MIDnet in Lincoln, Nebraska […]

Adventures in ERP migration

August 6, 2015:  Today I had a great phone call with a former colleague in the Washington State Community College system. He joined our little band of 32 IT Directors about a year after I did, and was at a similar-sized college so naturally we hit it off.  It was great to reminisce and recall personalities, […]